Mediterranean Women Stay Slim, Too: Eating to Be Sexy, Fit, and Fabulous! Read Free Page A

of my friends sat down to conversationless meals of frozen dinners in front of the television, or ate in shifts, or didn’t even know their grandparents, let alone share food, laughter, and time together in the kitchen. In the Mediterranean, mealtime is sacred. Nobody would read a newspaper at the table or eat in shifts or watch television while eating! Orrible! And don’t even get me started on processed food. It certainly doesn’t taste like food to me.
    Food fascinates me, and I love it without guilt. I love know-Where I Come From
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    ing where it comes from and cooking it in a way that brings out the very best in the ingredients I choose. I eat frequently, and I always enjoy what I eat. I never feel bad about the food on my plate or regret anything I choose to eat. And yet, unlike many Americans, I am slim and healthy. I have never been overweight. But I don’t diet.
    What’s the secret? Embracing the Mediterranean way of eating, not the American way of eating. Embracing a love of food rather than a fear of it. Embracing family, life, and food together in an inseparable and passionate whole. This big picture of eating and living has allowed me to embrace the sensual experience of food and stay at my ideal weight. I eat and live the Mediterranean way.
    The best part about eating in the spirit of the Mediterranean is that you don’t have to spend six months of every year in Italy, Spain, France, Greece, or Tunisia (nice as that would be) to eat this way. Eating and living in the Mediterranean spirit is equally possible right here in America because it isn’t about using a particular kind of fish native only to the Mediterranean Sea or a special spice available only in Greece or a certain type of French cheese. Eating in the Mediterranean style is about the amazing farmers’ markets in San Francisco or Manhattan or Madison, Wisconsin. It’s about fresh peaches at roadside stands in Georgia or fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob at roadside stands in Iowa. It’s about authentic St. Louis barbecue or fish plucked from the waters off the coast of Maine. It’s about wild blueberries and you-pick apple orchards and the strawberry patch in your own backyard. It’s about where you live, and what is fresh right in your own hometown. It’s about the people you love and the people who love you, and sharing the full, sensual, aesthetic appreciation of food with community. It’s really about living.
    The benefits of eating and living this way are not only for Mediterranean Women Stay Slim, Too
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    better health, a slimmer figure, and a longer life but for your community as a whole—for your household, your neighborhood, your town or city. If everybody ate only what was produced in their own communities, or at least from their own region of the country, travel would become a special thing indeed rather than the rote exercise of moving from one place to another or the chore of slogging back and forth between here and there. Foreign places would offer special new delights, not the same old stuff shipped to the supermarket from a thousand miles away. And by buying and eating locally, of course, you infuse your own community with energy and resources.
    Your community becomes very special when you plumb it for its bounty. You become an expert on seasonality. You know which vegetables are best at what moment, which fruits are ripe, which year has had a good season for apples or grapes, which weather patterns bring out the best in beets or peas. It bothers me that wherever you go in America today, restaurant menus essentially look the same. You can go to San Diego and find fiddlehead ferns and lobster on the menu—specialties of Maine! Likewise, grocery stores on the East Coast often feature produce grown in California. It’s all mixed up, and the result is the antithesis of freshness.
    √ My Path to Primo
    Before I go on about freshness, as I tend to do, let me tell you a little bit about how I became a chef. I pretty